James Arness and his family were Methodists. Arness' younger brother was actor Peter Graves. Peter used the stage name "Graves", a maternal family name. Arness attended John Burroughs Grade School, Washburn High School, and West High School in Minneapolis.
James Arness is an American actor, best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for 20 years. His brother was the late actor, Peter Graves.
Following the aforementioned "Gunsmoke" TV movies (the last in 1994, when Arness was 71), Arness basically retired. His marriage to Virginia Chapman ended in divorce in 1960. They had three children, one of whom, Jenny Lee, committed suicide in 1975. Arness subsequently married Janet Surtrees in 1978.
Peter Graves/Mission Impossible, brother James Arness and Airplane!
Did James Arness and Dennis Weaver get along?
' ” Arness, who remained close to Weaver after he left the series, praised him as a “really fine actor.” “We really liked each other a whole lot,” Arness said.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Peter Graves, who starred in the 1960s TV show "Mission: Impossible" and the "Airplane!" movies, died in Los Angeles on Sunday. He was 83. Graves' spokesman said the actor died of an apparent heart attack at his house in the coastal suburb of Pacific Palisades.
Why did James Arness and Peter Graves have different last names?
Graves was preceded in stardom by his older brother James Arness, who played Marshal Matt Dillon on TV's Gunsmoke. Born Peter Aurness, Graves adopted his grandfather's last name to avoid confusion with his older brother, who had dropped the "u" from the family name.
Gunsmoke made Ken Curtis' Festus Haggen a series regular to replace Dennis Weaver's beloved Chester Goode after he left to pursue other acting opportunities. However, Curtis refused to return for the first made-for-tv Gunsmoke movie after its 20-season run because of a couple of serious disagreements with a producer.
The cast of Gunsmoke was able to get pretty chummy with each other during the show's twenty-season run, to the point where they felt like a family. Leading this cast of Western stars was James Arness, a man who was— apparently— as tall as he was kind.
Dennis Weaver never anticipated that the series would be as successful and long running as it was— and as he neared the end of his time on Gunsmoke, he was entirely out of creative directions in which to take his character, and he began to feel the physical repercussions of walking with a limp for so long.
James Arness was the quiet type while he was away from his character, Marshal Matt Dillon. His Gunsmoke character was known for his strong moral code, sense of justice, and fairness, but off-screen Arness was known to limit personal appearances and interviews.
In this role, as in others, James Arness is shown with his natural colored hair, blonde. Later, he had to dye his natural blond hair since dark hair was considered more masculine, especially for the role of Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke.
Unlike many television stars, Arness never took on too many characteristics of his most famous role, nor did Dillon become more like the actor. "As for the issue of the onscreen personality and the real person, there's no comparison, no way.
Who turned down the role of Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke?
But that was the reasoning behind Polly Bond's decision to refuse the part of Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke. The former Polly Ellis had recently married Tommy Bond, a former child actor most famous for playing "Butch" on The Little Rascals.
But the changing of the guard really happened in the Season 9 episode titled "The Prairie Wolfer," where Chester and Festus actually appear together. In fact, this particular episode had appearances from Matt, Kitty, Doc, Chester, Festus, Sam and Quint.
A list of Gunsmoke cast members in order of how many episodes they appeared in would start predictably enough. James Arness, who lead the series as Marshall Matt Dillon, was in all 635 episodes.
He stayed with Gunsmoke through its entire television run, with the exception of 7 episodes in 1971, when Stone required heart surgery and Pat Hingle replaced him as Dr. Chapman.
Milburn Stone was 51 years young when he first started playing Doc Adams on Gunsmoke in 1955. Little did he know it would be the last acting job he would ever need.
Festus' character was known, in part, for the nasally, twangy, rural accent which Curtis developed for the role, but which did not reflect Curtis' actual voice.
The emotionally troubled Virginia Arness attempted suicide twice, in 1959 and in 1960. In 1975, Jenny Arness died of an apparently deliberate drug overdose. Two years later, an overdose that police deemed accidental killed her mother. Arness married Janet Surtees in 1978.
A: Matt Dillon (James Arness) and Kitty (Amanda Blake) never married during the series 1955-75 run, although close watchers of the show were convinced they had connected at some time. But in a 1973 episode, Matt had a brief affair with another woman, Mike Yardner (Michael Learned), while he had amnesia.
